It's Empty Inside
by Skull Bearer
Summary: Sometimes, the rescue doesn't end when you return home. Amnesia story.
1. Chapter 1

**It's Empty Inside**

It's like nails on a blackboard, and Erik wishes he'd brought the helmet because covering his ears with his hands does nothing. It's inside his head, and it won't stop.

By the third level down, they can hear the screams, worn to tatters. He has to catch Mystique's arms to stop her from breaking away. She looks at him, and her face is twisted up in pain that has nothing to do with the nails in their heads. "Charles-"

"And if that wasn't all of them? If there are more down here with guns?" He thinks they've killed all the guards in the complex, but Emma is having problems getting any distance, the building is built of something that dampens telepathy, and Charles isn't helping.

Mystique's face crumples, she's near tears because even after the beach, he's still her brother and no one, no one deserves this.

The screams stop, which is even worse. The jagged scraping in their heads doesn't, and that's a relief, because it means that Charles is still alive. Emma shakes her head over and over. "I can't get ten feet."

Erik shoves the door open to the latest series of deserted, fluorescent corridors. Emma clutches her head. "Door at the end."

It's better to consider the potential danger, tear the doors off their hinges as they pass to unmask any hidden gunmen, than to be left to think about what is behind the last door.

They'd had Charles two weeks before Mystique found out. It took them another three days to track the facility down.

It's hard to force his eyes open by the time they reach the last door. Everything inside his head is reverberating, like glass just before Banshee's scream shattered it. The door handle is cold metal under his hand. Familiar, comforting, an anchor in this unjointed world.

A glass beaker hits the wall and shatters inches from Erik's face the moment he pushes the door open, showing the three of them with glass splinters. The pain ratchets up an notch and there's a hoarse snarl and a rattling behind a stainless-steel cabinet.

The room is drenched in blood. Some of it stains the gurney in the centre of the room, its straps and a few of the medical implements on an upturned tray. The rest comes from the doctor currently slumped on the right floor, one of his eyes is a burst mess, something had been shoved in until it punctured the brain. The man had thrashed around the room in agony before finally collapsing in his final resting place.

The pain stops suddenly, everything quietens, the only noise ragged breathing in the far corner, behind the cabinet.

"Charles?"

An explosion in his head, barely coherent panic, a second beaker flies out and hits him on the shoulder, a glancing blow. It falls to the floor and spins there.

Somewhere inside Erik, he shudders. He'd been in this place. He'd hidden behind a cupboard - wood, not steel - and everything under his hands had become a weapon to attack Schmit. Fight, scream, anything not to be strapped down again-

Enough.

Erik crouches down, and motions the other two to do the same. Smaller, not a danger. The pain ebbs again, the breathing stops, starts in a harsh sob, trying to quieten and failing.

"Charles." He lowers his voice as much as possible, as soft as possible. Not a threat. "It's Erik. We're here for you. We came for you."

No response, the presence in their minds still hovers on the edge of pain. Breathing short and fast.

"No one's going to hurt you." He shuffles forward a step. When Mystique follows she knocks against the beaker and the pain jolts again. Erik waves them back.

"You're safe. It's okay." Reaching out empty hands in the universal gesture of peace. Two steps closer and the cabinet rattles again, a slender knife dropping off the edge and spinning on the white floor, throwing flashings of light.

One step more and Erik slowly pulls the cabinet aside. Charles is rammed up in the corner. It's an image that doesn't quite register with Erik at once. It's just fragments, the bared animalistic teeth, the wild staring eyes, the blood across his face and front and caking his hands around the scalpel he's holding. The legs twisted under him, under the bloody hospital shift.

"Charles." Charles doesn't say anything, he's shaking, each breath coming in rough ragged gasps, the scalpel raised to strike if Erik comes any closer. There's no recognition in his eyes.

"Charles." he repeats, hands still raised, empty. "It's Erik."

Charles' face twists, he presses himself further against the wall, not relaxing his grip on the scalpel.

"He doesn't know you." Emma's voice breaks in like a whip. Charles' head snaps around to where she's standing, arms crossed.

"What?" Erik shifts forward a little, and Charles tries to crawl up the wall to get away from him, dragging his useless legs behind him.

"I'm not getting- there's nothing there. Completely empty. He's got no memories outside those of this place."

Erik crushes down any emotions before they can take shape. Not now, not now. They crawl up his throat and crush his heart and nest in the back of his skull anyway, cold and despair. "What did they do to him?" He forces out through gritted teeth.

"Unless they had a telepath, he could only have done it to himself."

It's too much, Erik closes his eyes, just a moment to get everything under control, but it's the wrong moment. Charles screams something senseless and pushes himself away from the wall, the scalpel aimed at Erik's throat.

The metal handle is torn out of Charles' hand the next moment, and his full weight hits Erik. Erik's arms come out more out of instinct than anything, and, god, he's holding him again. Warm even in the freezing laboratory. He stinks of blood and sweat and terror, hair shaved off. This close, Erik can see pen strokes on the bared skin, marks showing where to cut and saw through bone and cut again.

Erik's arms tighten, and something in his heart unknots. Something that's been twisted up since he walked away on the beach. Charles' scream is half-stifled against his chest, and the other man flails out to stab Erik with the scalpel he still thinks he's holding. Erik catches his clenched fist, fingers easily wrapping around the wasted wrist. Charles shrieks again and tries to pull free, only to have Erik grab his free arm as well, he tries to bite Erik's hand to make him let go, but Erik pulls his hands down by his sides. He twists and tries to fight free, crying out and Erik sees a line of fresh red open along his neck and shoulders as an old wound is torn open.

"I won't tell you!" It's barely intelligible, a hoarse shriek so wasted as to be half a whisper.

"What!" Erik is struggling to keep Charles still, keep him from hurting himself further.

"I don't know!" Charles howls back. The screaming in their heads start again, louder, unbearable, Erik fears they'll be shaken to pieces by the force of it.

He doesn't know what else to do, to calm to terrified man in his arms. Erik lets go of Charles' hands and catches hold of his head, hands flat on either side, and touches his forehead to Charles', _pushing in_ the knowledge that they're not here to hurt him. He's safe, this is a rescue. They're here for him and _please calm down_.

The tearing in his head stops, Charles doesn't move. His breathing is all jolts and shaking, but the pain is replaced by confusion, more fear, and a growing tide of exhaustion. Erik keeps their heads touching, projecting _calm, calm, calm_. The place between rage and serenity. Peace. Don't be afraid. We're here for you.

He looks up at Emma, and she gets the message, walking closer to join them and adding her thought to theirs. Emma's calm is cold, ice rivers and the green ice of the arctic, where all things are so cold that even pain cannot exist there. Mystique joins them a moment later, more specific, a firelit evening, starry skies. Warm and secure and _safe safe safe_.

Charles' muscles relax in shudders, Erik shifts him until he's sitting in his lap, head under Erik's chin. Slowly calming, breath coming more easily. He's so tired, there's been no food and no sleep and too much pain. He just wants to rest.

_Then sleep_. A joint blending of their three minds. Emma's favourite luxurious couch, which she prefers even to her bed. Mystique's bed with its pile of blankets and two mattresses. And Erik, Erik who doesn't think and sends an image of the two of them, together in Charles' bed in the mansion. The most restful sleep Erik has ever had.

No one stops them leaving. Possibly they are all dead. Erik isn't taking any chances and collapses the complex in on itself. They stand together for a moment before Azazel comes to get them, overlooking the crater where the building had once been. Nothing moves.

In Erik's arms, Charles stirs but doesn't wake, chilled in the winter air.


	2. Chapter 2

**It's Empty Inside**

Chapter 2

They put Charles in Erik's room. Emma keeps him asleep when Erik cleans off the worst of the blood and bandages his wounds. His hands tracing out the deepest and newest cuts, along Charles' spine and neck, the older ones at his temples, the bones of his wrist, the tips of his fingers, his stomach and genitals. Only the newest look medical in nature. None are below the waist.

They'd wanted Charles to feel everything.

Erik sits beside the bed in the dark, tracing the lines on Charles's hand, he can feel the old cuts from handcuffs, electric wires, the missing fingernail on Charles' index finger.

Charles doesn't move as he wakes, a slight change in breathing, a sense of - something in Erik's mind, like a radio tuning in. He doesn't pull his hand from Erik's, but it twitches away when he touches a wound.

The silence stretches. Just the two of them, breathing softly. Charles finally speaks, so softly Erik has to strain to hear.

"You love me."

His voice is so cracked that it's easier for Erik to pick up a glass of water and help him drink it than to answer the question though the shockhopepain. He left Charles on that beach. It was his bullet that paralysed him. The humans took Charles because he wasn't there.

But god, he does. "Yes."

Charles finishes the glass and turns his face to look at Erik. In the dark, the shadows fill out the new hollows in his face and Erik can pretend nothing in the last few months happened. That they're both in the mansion. Together.

Charles smiles, weary and happy, and he reaches out and takes Erik's hand again. "Good." He closes his eyes again.

"Do you remember me?"

Charles opens tired eyes again, and looks at him, smile gone. "No."

Erik swallows, feeling the heavy, empty weight settle in his stomach. Gone. Gone forever. He runs his fingers over the curve of Charles' skull, the faint prickles where his hair is beginning to grow back. "What did you do?"

Charles pulls his hands free, holds them in front of his face. "They wanted to know." His voice trembles, his hands shake. Erik sits beside Charles and takes his hands, frail nests of bones, in his own.

"About mutants?"

"I couldn't- I couldn't-" Charles' voice rises. "But they wanted- I would have- I couldn't!" Those blue eyes black in the darkness, staring beseechingly at Erik. "I didn't- I had-" He pulls his hands away and clutches at his head as though tearing something out. "I didn't know- but they-" His breathing coming is quick gasps. "They wanted to know!" A thin wail.

In the first weeks after Cuba, before Mystique had found out about the complex, Erik had imagined this scene many times. His own righteous anger and triumph when Charles finally realised he was right, not letting him forget it, making him sorry he had ever thought differently, and thrown Erik away. Now it's as though a plug had been pulled out of him, and everything's cold and empty inside him. He pulls Charles against him and hugs him, wishing only to take him inside him somehow, to fill that empty gulf. He presses his cheek against Charles' head and projects calm and, yes, love, until Charles stops shaking.

"What did they want to know?"

A shudder. _Everything_.

* * *

><p>"How is he?" Emma doesn't approach any closer as Erik stiffens, an animal surge of protectiveness. Charles had fallen asleep again after managing some food, one hand still wrapped around Erik's.<p>

"I'm surprise you care." It's harsher than he means it.

Emma doesn't justify that with a remark, instead looking down at Charles for long moment until it's everything Erik can do not to drag her out of the room by her earrings.

"He was kind." She says at last. "When I thought he's be cruel. Not many would have been, in his place."

Erik's jaw trembles, he clenches his teeth. Tears prick the back of his eyes. He bares his teeth, is bitterly glad for the darkness.

"Don't bother." Emma doesn't move for long moment, scrutinising Charles. Erik swallows, blinks until he can risk speaking without his voice breaking.

"He didn't know who I was."

Emma shakes her head, not looking at him.

Erik rubs his face. Control. "Make him remember." Emma is not the telepath Charles is, but surely-

She's shaking her head. "There's nothing there."

"What do you mean?" His voice cracks on the last word, "The memories are there, you just have to look-" He struggles, digs his nails into his palm until he can continue. "He showed me things I had forgotten."

Emma glares at him. "They're _gone_. There's nothing to bring back. For all I can do, he might as well have been born two weeks ago."

* * *

><p>The chair Erik makes for Charles isn't very comfortable, all hard metal with only a pillow from the bed popped against the back for comfort. Erik helps him in and Charles smiles, just a little. It's been days, and days too long. He wants to see an outside he can't remember, see people the he doesn't know. Mystique came in once to see him, a spasm of pain crossing her face before she left- <em>I can't see him<em>.

For Erik, it's like bending metal. That constant focus, in such a small space, on one subject. They don't speak. Charles doesn't ask, and Erik doesn't offer. Everything seems bigger, the world in one room. Erik would give anything for it to be so, and go one forever.

Their headquarters, such as it is, is simply a large, low bungalow on a cliff facing the sea. One of the few of Shaw's bases where the man hadn't left his mark. Azazel and Riptide are excavating a complex under it, but right now it's no more than a large cellar.

He shouldn't tell Charles this, and he doesn't, although it makes his teeth itch. Charles doesn't seem to notice, he looks around at the different rooms, the kitchen, the living room, the dining room. The helmet lies where Erik put it the moment Raven told him they had a lead on Charles' whereabouts, on the low table. Charles picks it up. If he senses Erik stiffen he says nothing, just turning it over in this hands.

He puts it back. "I wish I could remember this place." He looks out of the window, at the seabirds, the crashing of the waves that's been a constant refrain here. "I would be happy here." Wistful.

Erik grits his teeth until his jaw cracks. It hurts even to imagine. A harsh sharp jab of pain that Charles feels, he flinches.

"No. I- I'm sorry." He closes his eyes, rubs the heels of his hands over them. "Forget it." His hands shake.

Charles' shoulders are warm under his thin shirt- one of Erik's- the sharp hollows of collarbones perfect nests for Erik's fingers. He just wants to stop this, take Charles back into the bedroom and keep him there, tell him that yes, they were here together, had always been, spin whatever kind sweet lie necessary to make sure Charles would stay and never, never go. Never tell him to leave.

Erik is many things, but he is not that kind of liar.

"No. Please." Charles holds up a hand, it's shaking slightly, Erik can feel the tremors. "Please. Whatever it is, it can wait, can't it?" He turns to Erik, his eyes are wide. He tries to smile. "I know. I don't have to be a telepath. It's not good. But please, not yet. I just need-"

He puts his hands to his head, a loud flash of pain and fear, the broken memories of the human complex, the desperation to hang on to the last few days of peace, of silence broken only by their breathing and the sigh of the waves. Please. Not yet. Don't tell me whatever it is. Let me keep this. Just a bit longer. Don't tell me I am/I did-

Something so bad you won't talk to me about any of it.

"No." Erik doesn't move. His bones might snap. "It was nothing like that."

"Did I hurt you?" Charles' hand covers his, resting on his shoulder. "Is that it?"

"I hurt you." He offers the memory up, held out like his own heart for a burnt offering. Charles picks it out of his mind. Turns it over and over in his own, a puzzle fragment with no connecting pieces. Charles on the beach, Erik holding him. The bullet.

"What did I do?" There's no horror, no sorrow. There are no emotions connected to losing his legs because Charles never lost them- they were never there. Just echoes fear and pain from Erik as he slides down to sit beside Charles on the floor, penance for the worst mistake he ever made and the one for which he will never forgive himself.

"It was an accident." It sounds more like a plea than Erik meant. Charles' fingers tangle themselves in his hair, slow, gently, every touch a new discovery. "I was being shot at, I knocked the bullets away. One hit you."

Charles picking out the new piece of memory from Erik's head, slotting it beside the first. Moira shooting, the bullets, Charles screaming. The fingers in his hair tighten. "Why were they shooting at us? And- couldn't I have-" A new pieces of memory, so sharp around the edges it draws blood. It's pain, pain, nothing but pain which breaks off with a shock and a scream that's not his own as the man with the electrodes drops them and clutches at his eyes as they bleed out of his head.

They'd kept him drugged after that.

Erik finds Charles' hand and has to fight not to hold it so tight it would cause pain. "I know." Unbidden, his own memory, a matched set to Charles, more worn around the edges with age but still full of pain. Shaw, the knives, the tables, the straps. Pain.

_I know, I know. I love you. I know._

Charles kisses his head. "Thank you."

Erik looks down. Charles' useless legs. "I hurt you." He repeats.

Charles nods, still nuzzling him. "I can't remember that. I do remember you saving me."

Erik doesn't want to say anymore, just as long as they stay here. He would never say anything again, just as long as this moment doesn't have to end. He does anyway, with a feeling like driving fingers into an open wound, because if he doesn't he never will and he is _not that kind of liar_. "There were men, on ships. I was trying to kill them." There. Out. Let Charles hear it and see the memory and turn away again.

Charles' touch in his mind is feather light, fingers sinking into his hair and brushing along his scalp. The memory, pulled out and held up to the light of day like a wineglass. The missiles hanging in the air in snapshot.

"Why?"

"They tried to kill us." The words come out harsh through gritted teeth, in his mind, they're a desperate plea.

There's no 'why' to that. Charles again goes in his mind and picks out the last piece that ties the puzzle together, Charles shouting at Erik, trying to fight him. The desperate breaking struggle on the sand with the missiles crashing down. Erik pushing him off, the place where one memory meets the other and Moira steps in.

Charles holds them together, a line of film held up to the light to see through. he holds them for a long moment, face pressed to Erik's hair, staring at the helmet lying where he left it.

"Why did I fight you?" Whispered, breath tickling.

Erik sits up, shaking his head. "I don't know." He never did. For all Charles had given him, that he had given back, it was one thing they had never shared.

Charles leans back in his chair, hands crossed before his face, looking down. With him gone, Erik feels blind, unable to see what Charles is thinking. He looks up and smiles, a small, uncertain thing.

"I want you to show me."

"What do you want to see?"

"Everything."


End file.
